eBay

Perfect Jeremy. Thanks. I'll work with Tom to have slides and notes up by Sunday since I didn't play a big part in this one either. Kyle ---

I added an "Any Questions?" slide after slide #32 (last slide). Kyle - is that what you were talking about or did you want someone to add the secondary questions somewhere? Thanks, Jeremy



If you guys don't mind, and I am sure you won't, I am going to go ahead and take the lead on the Adidas case to even things up a bit. I will post questions, notes, etc. by this Sunday morning. We have a couple of weeks on this one so we should not have to worry about things at the last minute. I assume he will not change the schedule on us much. Thanks, Tom 3:19pm

I can cover slides 29-32 if we present. I don't have office 2007 at work. Can someone add a questions slide after slide 32 if you get a sec? Thanks Kyle 2:45pm

I have fully taken that question out of the presentation, on the other agenda slides as well. Let me know if you need me to do anything else. I will probably be checking in around 5pm tonight.

Thanks, Ray 2:25pm



I agree to take it out at this point. I might of had some time this afternoon, but it is hard to plan for. Looking at this during lunch didn't work out.

I can present 17 - 21/22. Tom, 22 was your contribution to the competition slides. Not sure if you want it or if it helps with continuity if I present it. I'm fine either way.

Dan 12:42PM

I vote we just take slide 25 out (Does the eBay brand create a sense of trust, security and community?), unless someone is already working on adding something to it. I went ahead and took it out on version 11. I can present slides 10 - 16. Everything else looks great.

Thanks, Jeremy 12:30PM



Hi guys,

I think this is looking good. I agree, we need a slide or two after slide 25 (Does the eBay brand create a sense of trust, security and community?) That, or we can just cut the question completely.

I wont be back on until later this afternoon. It is going to be a crazy today at work. If we have to present I can cover slides 1-9 and/or current slides 24-28.

Thanks, Ray 9:54am

I made a few edits to font in a couple places. Couldn't see the white font on the blue circles so changed it to a dark blue font. I also reworded the SWOT question throughout. The only piece I see that needs work is after slide 25. There's a question posed but no support/info slides after it. I'm not sure if anyone had a plan on addressing that question. Other than that it looks good. Kyle 8:45am

I really don't see enough competitive financial info that means anything. One or two years is really not enough time to trend anything meaningful. I added one slide after Dan's competition stuff. Not sure what else I can contribute, it looks good. I found a few spelling errors and fixed them. I can probably find time at work today to add if needed, just let me know. Tom 5:30am

Let me see what I can come up with for competition financials etc.. Will post by 10am (hopefully much earlier) Tom 2:30am

For the background, does anybody object to just leaving it white at this point? The theme last time really messed with some of the smartArt that I used. Had to go back and redo a lot of the colors to make things readable.

Dan

I've added some slides for competition. I feel like I should still add something financial for the eBay vs. comp theme. I'll have time to do that during lunch tomorrow and I'll see if anything else is needed. Kyle, I agree about the SWOT question. Go for it.

Dan

I added some pictures/logos from ebay's website that I found, I think everything looks great. If the images look bad once we add a background design we can just get rid of them. I will have some time tomorrow during my lunch break to work on anything else, just let me know if I need to do anything. Thanks, Jeremy



I think rewording the secondary question for the SWOT makes sense. Makes our use of the tools a little more subtle. I also like the idea about the merchant rewards. eBay needs to find ways to reward its users versus finding new ways to charge them. I think it is fine to increase fees, but eBay in turn needs to increase the value they are adding for buyers and sellers, like free boxes or better rates on PayPal.

-ray

Sorry I've missed a lot of the meat for this one. Had something unexpected come up this afternoon. I have a couple things to add so far.
 * 1) I think the SWOT secondary question could be reworded so the SWOT serves as the tool to answer a question vs. the SWOT analysis being the question. e.g. What is eBay's current market position? - I haven't changed the slides yet, I wanted to get your thoughts first
 * 2) I added a recommendation about "Merchant Rewards". I've used eBay a lot and in the past (early 2000's), eBay used to give away free boxes through the USPS regardless of the quantity. I actually still have some in the basement for shipping stuff. If they gave away resources for merchant points (based on seller transactions) it would reward users for being active users and help sellers to save money and stay active. - pg 297, Pierre stated that, "Our success is really based on our members' success." I'm still thinking through if that's possible from the buyer's perspective.

- Please feel free to change or delete the recommendation. Just a thought I had. - Other than that I can go through and format the ppt as a next step. I'll look through again and see if there's anything we're missing as a secondary question. - Kyle

 eBay+5.pptx I added some more info to the acquisition slide. I will check back before bed tonight to see if you need me to add anything else. Been a little crazy around here today. We had our house on the market and it sold today. Good news is the people want to close 4/30, bad news is they want to move in at close!

-Ray

This is looking good. I think we might need some summary/list of conclusions on how eBay is doing after Jeremy's graphs. Also, maybe some more info/analysis of the payments and comm channel. The other thing I think we need to bulk up is about eBay's brand and if it builds trust/security, calling out in more detail the moves in fee structure and feedback.

let me know if you need me to work on any of this or if others are already planning to.

thanks, ray

Not sure what I need to work on? Or what everyone else is working on at the moment? What do I need to cover? I added a couple of things to SWOT ( in red)

Ray - I did condense a few of your questions with similar themes.

I thought these 3... What are the values on which eBay was founded? Do eBay’s current actions and strategies align with their values? What has happened to the company culture at eBay?

Can be addressed here: Does eBay still adhere to the strategies and values on which it was founded?

All - No new content, but I've tried to introduce some structure around the secondary questions. I'm working on the 'Who are eBay's competitors...' question. Let me know if there are any concerns with the direction I took and I'll revert. Ray, I'm good with the recommendations. Dan

I agree with Ray's recommendations. It seems that Donahoe is trying to take eBay to a very different place than both his employees and customers want it to go, which not make anyone happy. I think eBay needs to get back to the basics of what eBay was originally about - bringing a community together to do business like in the old days. I think there needs to be incentives for buyers and sellers to continue to use eBay, maybe a frequent buyer/seller program can be set up where they get points and it allows them to not pay shipping on items they buy in the future or maybe they are entered in a contest to win some money at the end of each year after they make so many transactions. I am just thinking out load right now but I think there needs to be some type of incentive to get people to be active users. I also have not used the eBay so I am not sure if they have something like this already or not. What do you guys think? - Jeremy



Hi guys,

Below are a few slides I added. Feel free to change the primary or secondary questions. I was not sure where you wanted to take this one. I dont know much about eBay, never used the site personally, which I think my focus and recommendation has been around ousting Donahoe as CEO. His actions and beliefs do not seem to align with the eBay culture. Employees at eBay are becoming apathetic, and he has been doing a bad job at running the marketplaces SBU.

I will be back on later tonight. Let me know what else you want me to do and where you think we should focus. I think getting Donahoe out and repairing relationships with sellers is key. What separates eBay is the auction format and the variety of items. Those two things are hard to replicate.

Maybe I am way off. If so, feel free to tell me.

Thanks, Ray

Did you guys get the email on the Dell presentation. He gave it an "A pass" below:

Good morning,

I have examined your PPt presentation on the above, and I regard this as an excellent piece of work.

It identifies exceelent questions - which is half the battle - and then takes us through these offering crisp and insightful analysis.

By focusing on the questions, there is never the sense of simply repeating the case, but instead you succeed in building up a coherent and robust argument.

This merits an A pass.

MMcD

I like the slides Jeremy and the idea of using the secondary questions as our outline. I'll be online throughout the day working on the case and looking at recommendations. I think we should come up with 5 or 6 recommendations and have a couple guys play devil's advocate and pick the best 2, 3, or 4 that will work best. - Kyle



I agree about the Aston Villa format... I also think this is how our instructor wants us to fomat...That was the point of his discussion last class when he used the questions to discuss the case. It makes things clearer on how to divide up the work once we agree on questions. Tom

I need to finish the case this afternoon and I'll get some slides out tonight (late after the UK game) or tomorrow morning. Jeremy, slides look good.

I do have a quick thought on structure. I really liked what Aston Villa did with Dell where the secondary questions became the outline. We did this somewhat with Dell, but it wasn't quite as explicit. If we can come to agreement on the secondary questions, it would become easier to divide and conquer.

Thanks, Dan

Hi guys, I am still working on some slides. I am going to be offline most of the day today but I will get some slides together by tomorrow afternoon,

thanks, Ray

Hey guys, I have put together some slides. The first 4 I thought we could work into the internal analysis part and the last 2 would probably go in the market/industry overview section. I think my slide on active vs registered users answers Ray's question on ebays stickiness, it seems they still are attracting new users to register with them but those are not turning into "active" users. I will continue to work on some stuff later today and tomorrow.

Thanks, Jeremy





Hi Guys,

here are my notes. I was going to work on a company overview slide, a history of acquisitions slide, and the pest analysis. Some of the key questions i think we should examine are:

Is Donahue the right successor as CEO? Does he get the eBay culture? Is eBay still living up to the values it was founded on? What does the future hold for ebay? Who does ebay truly compete with? What is the ebay culture? Can it be repaired? Does the ebay brand create a sense of trust, security, and community? Is ebay lossing its stickiness? Can ebay keep both its large and small sellers happy? What can ebay do to grow its community of users? How is ebay differentiating itself from other competitors?

Let me know what you think and what else you want me to work on. I will use the last Dell PPT as the shell for my slides.

thanks, Ray